| Aim | - To find whether people would still be obedient to an authority figure even if it means it would result in harming others |
| Background | - Milgram was from a Jewish family
- Interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII |
| How sample was taken | - Newspaper and mail advertisement
- Experiment on “memory and learning"
- At Yale University
- Paid $4.50 |
| Sample | - 40 males (20-50 years old)
- New Heaven
- With diverse job occupations |
| Procedure | - Participants put in twos – “teacher” + “learner”
- Teacher sees learner strapped into a chair
- Learner had to recall a pair of words
- If mistake was made teacher had to give an electric shock
- If teacher refused to give a shock = experimenter had to give series of orders
- Hearing screams
- At 375V actor goes silent |
| Features that explain high levels of obedience obtained | - Yale University: credibility and respect
- Volunteered
- Being paid increased the sense of obligation
- Participant thought learner and teacher had
been allocated randomly thus fairly
- Commitment to science
- Graduated commitment
- Agentic shift |
| Electric shocks | - 30 horizontal switches
- Electric shock from 15-450 Volts
– NOT REAL, BUT PARTICIPANT THOUGHT THEY WERE |
| Graduated commitment | - 15 volt intervals psychologically makes it easier to give a higher shock |
| Sample shock | - Each naïve participant was given a sample shock
- Convinces the participant of the authenticity of the generator |
| The series of orders | 1. Please Continue
2. The experiment requires you to continue
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue
4. You have no other choice but to continue |
| After experiment | - Participant were debriefed
- Psychometric tests taken to make sure no emotional harm was done
- Participant met Learner – make sure he was not in danger
- Told their reaction was normal |
| Observations behind one-way mirror | - Nervous behaviour e.g. sweat
- 3 participants had seizures
- Some participants got up and left
- Some showed reluctance after 300V
- Participants who left before 450V = “Oh I can’t go on with this”, “This is Crazy”. |
| Dependent measures: ‘defiant’ participant. | - A participant who stopped before 450V |
| Dependent measures: 'obedient' participant | - A participant who fully complied and gave all shock levels commanded |
| Dependent variable | - Levels of obedience shown |
| Predicted results | - 14 Yale students were asked to predict the results
- Predicted only 1% would go through to the end |
| Results | - 65% of participants continued to the highest level of 450 V = Obedient participant
- All participants gave a minimum of 300 Volts = Defiant participant
- 5 participants went no further |
| Conclusions | - Produced strong tendencies to obey
- Created lots of tension and emotional strain |
| Evalutation | - People still be obedient to an authority figure even if it means harming others
- Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up |
| Strengths | - Highly controlled: control over extraneous variables, lab experiment
- High level of experimental realism: men believed it was real
- Replicable: standardised |
| Weaknesses | - Not representative: androcentric, all from New Heaven
- Lack of ecological validity: artificial setting
- Demand characteristics: Participants may have done it to be socially desirable or “normal” – answering a social cue |
| Control variables | - Same shock generator used each time
- Same people played the roles of ‘experimenter’ and ‘learner’
- The answers from the ‘learner’ was the same each time |
| Data | - Quantative + qualitive data |
| Quantative data | Numbers:
- How far along the shock generator they got |
| Qualitive data | Observed behaviour that was filmed:
- 3 participants had seizures
- Pulling own hair
- Laughing nervously |
| Ethical guidelines not upheld | - DECEPTION - unaware the learner was a confederate
- RIGHT TO WITHDRAW - weren't allowed to leave when asked
- HARM - exposed to extremely stressful situations, causes psychological harm |
| Ethical guidelines upheld | - Informed consent
- Participants debriefed
- Participants were also seen a year later as a check up |
| Validity | - High face validity: measured what he wanted to measure obedience
- However, it can be argued that obedience is too simplistic and behaviour was also effected by other variables like empathy
- Lacked ecological validity, unrealistic situation |
| Ethnocentric | - Only carried out in one country, cannot assume that the same levels of obedience will be shown in other countries |
| Not ethnocentric | - Deliberately ethnocentric, to prove hypothesis 'Germans are different'
- Replications of Milgram's study were carried out in many countries and found similar findings |
| Reliability | - Replicable: standardised
- The way in which results were recorded would have lead to someone overseeing the procedure and recording the outcome |
| Disposition meaning | - Distinguishing an individual from others |
| Milgram’s Agency Theory: Autonomous state | - People directing their own actions and they take responsibility for the results |
| Milgram’s Agency Theory: Agentic state | - People allowing others to direct their actions and pass of the responsibility for their results |
| Milgram’s Agentic shift theory: Two things must happen | - The person giving orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behaviour
- The person being ordered is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility |
| The ‘obedience alibi’ | - Limitation of the agentic state: evidence shows behaviour of the Nazis cannot be explained in terms of authority and an agentic shift |
| Mandel's views | - Milgram’s research focuses too much on situation and not enough on disposition
- Milgram’s research provides these evildoers with an ‘obedience alibi’ which they do not deserve
- Argues that these Nazis were not given a direct order to massacre Jews |
| Mandel's evidence against situation and agentic state (shift) | - Jews killed in Poland by Police Battalion 101 during the war - volunteers
- Could opt out - but very few did
- The authority figure (Officer) was not even there to supervise the killing |
| Mandel view on disposition side of debate | - Volunteers showed willingness to take part, not following orders
- It was their disposition (personality) not the pressure of situation forcing them to be obedient |
| Freewill vs determinism: FREEWILL | - 35% stopped before 450V |
| Freewill vs determinism: DETERMINISM | - 65% of participants continued to 450V their behaviour was determined by the situation |
| Usefulness | - Positive authority in schools + businesses
- However can be abused for malicious purposes |
| Link to key area | - Social area, reveals the extent to which behaviour can be influenced by other people |
| Link to theme | - Responses to people in authority
- People still be obedient to an authority figure even if it means harming others |
